The water cycle – its passage through the solid, gaseous and liquid states that insuffeens life to the planet – is “becoming increasingly irregular and extreme” on Earth, warns the World Meteorological Organization (). This implies “fluctuations ranging from intense rainfall to periods of drought,” says a report from this organism linked to the United Nations that has developed from the data provided by the weather services of 60 countries and other scientific institutions. This document, the OMM points out, highlights “the cascade effects that both excess and water scarcity on economies and society have.”
That transit from scarcity to excess was fully suffered in Spain in 2024, the year in which the report on Wednesday is focused. Because he went from to one in the Valencian Community in the fall that left more than 230 fatal victims and 17.5 billion euros of economic losses, as the OMM report recalls. In fact, they concentrated on that episode of torrential rains on the Mediterranean coast, according to the data collected by the OMM in this analysis presented this Thursday.
The study details that in 2024 only around one third of the hydrographic basins of the planet presented “normal” conditions, taking as reference the period between 1991 and 2020. “In the rest, the registered values were higher or lower than normal, which reflects a clear imbalance for the sixth consecutive year,” says the OMM.
Flows were observed well below normal in key river basins, such as those of the Amazonas, San Francisco, Paraná and Orinoco rivers in South America, and those of the Zambeze, Limpopo, Okavango and Orange rivers in South Africa, explains this organization. On the other hand, floods in large areas of Western Africa were recorded, particularly in the Senegal, Niger and Volta rivers, and Lake Chad. “In Central Europe and in part of Asia, the river flow was superior to normal, and in some of the most important basins, such as Danube, Ganges, Godavari and Indo, there were episodes of floods,” the OMM points out.
“The water resources of the world are subject to an increasing pressure and, at the same time, the most extreme dangers related to water are having a growing impact on lives and subsistence means,” he writes in the prologue of the report, general secretary of the OMM.
The influence on the rainy change rains that the planet is experiencing due to the greenhouse gases expelled by the human being, mainly with the burning of fossil fuels, is not completely clear. But scientists have determined that global warming is worsening extreme events, and, and are making them more frequent and intense.
“Water sustains our societies, drives our economies and strengthens our ecosystems,” recalls Saul, who emphasizes the “critical need to improve the exchange of data on the flow of rivers, groundwater, soil humidity and water quality, which remain very little monitored.” “Without data, we run the risk of acting blindly,” says the head of the OMM. The OMM estimates that about 3.6 billion people lack adequate access to water at least for one month a year, “a figure that will foreseeably increase to exceed 5,000 million here at 2050”.
Glaciers
The study not only addresses extreme events, but also phenomena of longer travel but that are a clear indicator of the heating process that the earth is living. “In 2024, for the third consecutive year, a generalized loss of glacier mass in all regions was observed,” warns the OMM. “Many regions of small glaciers have already reached or are about to overcome the so -called water peak, that is, the point where a glacier reaches its maximum annual runoff rate, after which it decreases as a result of the decline of the glacier,” adds this organization. “In total, 450 gigatons were lost, which is equivalent to a huge seven kilometers high block, seven kilometers wide and seven kilometers deep, or a enough volume of water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools.”
In addition, OMM puts the focus on the pressure suffered by groundwater due to “excessive extraction”, something that is a problem because “reduces future availability” for communities and ecosystems. “Only 38% of the wells (from a sample of 37,406 of the 47 countries that contributed data on groundwater) presented normal levels; the rest recorded excessive abundance or shortage of water,” concludes this organization.
